he word "Godhead" is a simple doublet of the less frequently occurring "Godhood." Both forms stand side by side in the Ancren Riwle (about 1225 AD), and both have survived until today, though not in equally common use. They are representatives of a large class of abstract substantives, formed with the suffix "-head" or "-hood", most of which formerly occurred in both forms almost indifferently, though the majority of them survive only, or very preponderatingly (except in Scottish speech), in the form -hood. The two suffixes appear in Middle English as "-hede" and "-hod", and presuppose in the Anglo-Saxon which lies behind them a feminine "haeda" (which is not actually known) by the side of the masculine had. The Anglo-Saxon word "was originally a distinct substantive, meaning `person, personality, sex, condition, quality, rank' " (Bradley, in A New English Dict. on a Historical Basis, under the word "-hood"), but its use as a suffix early superseded its separate employment. At first "-hede" appears to have been appropriated to adjectives, "-hod" to substantives; but, this distinction breaking down and the forms coming into indiscriminate use, "-hede" grew obsolete, and remains in common use only in one or two special forms, such as "Godhead," "maidenhead" (Bradley, as cited, under the word "-head").